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Scientists have created a fresh superfluid that has a damaging great deal , meaning that if it ’s advertize to the right , it speed up to the leftfield and vice versa .
The bizarre behavior may vocalise like a freakish usurpation of nature , but it is a phenomenon that physicists have learn hints of before . However , this is the first time that negative muckle has been exhibit without equivocalness in a lab , say Han Pu , a theoretical physicist at Rice University who was not regard in the new inquiry .
Force equals mass times acceleration.
The newly make material with negative mass is a case ofBose - Einstein condensate , in which individual molecule move as one physical object , the scientists wrote in the new study . [ The 18 Biggest Unsolved Mysteries in Physics ]
The new findings could take for clues to the behavior come in the heart of ultracold neutron lead , which also move as superfluids , say study co - generator Michael Forbes , a physicist at Washington State University .
Negative mass
One of the first things that bookman learn in gamy schooling cathartic is that force is adequate to spate times speedup , or F= m*a . CalledNewton ’s second jurisprudence of movement , the equation prescribe what everyone experiences daily : If you push an object ( debar other forces at play ) , it accelerates off from you .
Yet , for a tenacious time , scientist have known that — theoretically , at least — there are certain condition in which acceleration could be damaging .
" These types of negative - quite a little conditions can arise in a variety of contexts , " Forbes told Live Science . " They do n’t happen out in the middle of space , as far as we know . "
However , there have been hints of this conduct occurring spontaneously in systems where light is traveling through nonlinear materials with special electrical belongings , as well as in sealed type ofcrystals . However , in these organisation , it was hard to control or predict where the negative mass occurred , so it was difficult to say whether the demeanour was actually occurring , Forbes say .
Supercool atoms
In the new study , which was published April 10 in the journalPhysical Review Letters , Forbes and his confrere reject this uncertainty . They cooledrubidium atomsto near out-and-out zero ( minus 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit , or minus 273.15 degree Celsius ) while the atoms were splosh inside a tiny horizontal tube . At these bone - chill temperature , the corpuscle move glacially slow , and their motion is correlate such that the cloth made up of the rubidium atoms represent more like a wafture than a particle . In meat , it is as if the assemblage ofsupercool atomsbehaves as one molecule .
Then , the researchers reflect lasers at the tube , which commute the State Department of the corpuscle inside . Based on the slant of the optical maser , it push the molecule either one way or the other . Next , the researchers opened up the last of the tube holding the atom . Normally , the optical maser light would push the swarm of mote to boom outward toward the ends of the tube . But in this instance , a daze moving ridge built up on one side of the cloud , causing the swarm of atoms to contract forth from the wave .
" If you stress to push [ the swarm of atom ] away , it ’s effectively the lasers that are causing it to push back , " Forbes allege . " At a microscopical degree , that ’s what ’s happening . "
Though the new demonstration may seem to violate thelaws of physics , it really does n’t .
" I would n’t say it ’s unexpected , " Pu order Live Science .
That ’s because the effective negative mass of the organization here isinertial mass , which dictate how an object speed in reception to an applied force-out ; in this case the study plainly entail that in certain narrow , dynamical consideration , the sign on the aggregated terminus in the equation is pitch . But vigour is still conserved and the gravitative quite a little of the system , mean the amount of gravitational pull the atom cloud exerts and experiences , has not changed . So Newton ’s law of world-wide gravitation , which describes the gravitational attraction between two masses , has not been violated . ( This natural law is what dictates that , in a vacuum withoutair opposition , a feathering and a lead ball will go down toward Earth at the same pace . )
Because the gravitative mass of the Bose - Einstein condensation is still confirming , the private atoms in the material are still pull together by gravitation . So if the same experiment were flip out so it were in a vertical metro , theforce of gravitycould cause the atom cloud to go down toward the floor and expand , just as ordinary hunch would gestate , Forbes lend .
( If , somehow , an experiment created conditions in which gravitational people turned electronegative , that would likely spoil cardinal physics law , and thing would get weird — fast . For illustration , if there were a negative gravitational aggregative particle and a positive raft particle in proximity , one would be attracted to the other , while the other would be revolt . So one mote would fundamentally go after the other one always , make endlessly high speeds , Forbes pronounce . )
The new findings are interesting from a strictly theoretical dot of opinion , but they could also help scientists understand what ’s sound on inside neutron lead , Forbes said . For example , cold clouds of lithium atoms filled with fermions have almost selfsame energetic prop to neutron stars , so they could be used to make " experimentation " that otherwise never could have been done on the massive interstellar objects in space , Forbes tell .
Originally published onLive Science .
